Can someone tell French journalists (and French people in general) that all Quebecers do not all the time start all their sentences by saying “tabarnak” and do not all the time say “tabarnak” to everyone two words.
Last week, the newspaper Le Figaro published in its Travel section a text entitled Tabarnak! Quebec French appears on Google Translate.
Google screenshot
It’s as if every time I wrote a text about the French, I started my column with “Fucking hell.” Tabouère, that annoys me!
fucking translation
“Chum, char, tabarnak, balado… Even if it seems close to us, the French of Quebec remains no less difficult to understand, as certain expressions and [certains] words are different from ours,” writes the journalist. As if we were half-hearted cousins speaking in an incomprehensible language.
Yes, we say “podcast” and “email” in Quebec and you, in France, you say podcast et mail! I don’t see how this is “difficult to understand”!
That said, it is true that “Québécois French appears on Google Translate”. Except that Google insults us all by referring to our French as “French (Canada)”. Um, they didn’t get the memo that this special language where we say “blonde” instead of “girlfriend” and “chum” instead of “boyfriend” is in Quebec and not in Canada? And it’s insulting to the Acadians who don’t use the same expressions as us, but who nevertheless speak “Canadian” French.
And it is also insulting to all French speakers across the Francophonie, because it is as if there was a basic French (the French of France) and that the other French spoken were only inferior variations of it.
On the other hand, I promise you hours of pleasure if you have fun entering lots of words, expressions or complete sentences into Google’s translation software using the “French (Canada)” category.
For example, it may be useful to know that in Quebec we say “gougounes” and that in France we say des tongs.
Let’s move on from flip flops to pussycats. I entered the word into Google translate which translated “foufoune” (French Canada) as pussy (French from France). Except it’s confusing. In Quebec, the word foufoune designates the buttocks while in France it designates the female genitalia (the vulva). Imagine the faces of the French people arriving in front of the electric Foufounes!
I had fun entering my favorite phrase from the song into Google translate My country by Robert Charlebois, written by Réjean Ducharme: “It takes everything to insert your punch card into the slot of the clock” which Google translated into French from France as: “It takes everything to insert your punch card into the slot of the clock” clock”.
Conversely, I entered into Google translate the very French expression “Fuck your mother” which was translated into French (Canada) as “Niaise ta Mère” even though fucking and fooling are not exactly the same!
So I don’t understand
I entered “tabarnak de calisse” in the French (Canada) section and Google translated it into French from France as “What is it?”.
I imagine a French tourist who is offered a “beaver tail” in a restaurant and who responds “tabarnak de calisse”!
